Danny Healy-Rae challenges cuts to beds and disability services

Thank you very much. There's two parts to my leader's questions and I have to start off with registering my concern with the closure of beds in the District Hospital in Killiany, the Community Hospital, from 38 beds down to 23, a loss of 15 beds. Columbanus, Public Nursing Home, from 92 down to 65, a loss of 27 beds, including the future ward to deal with dementia patients. These are savage courts, 42 beds taken out of the one yard in Killiany and I want to register my concern about it. I want to know what your plan is for the people who get sick in the Killiany area. Are you telling them not to get sick? Are you telling the people that are getting old and have to go into the public nursing home not to get old? He said if we're going to increase bed capacity around the country, this is what you're doing in Killiany. And I want to know what you're going to do or how you're going to cater for the people that are getting sick. The second part of my leader's question is, I want to highlight on behalf of parents and families of adult children with intellectual disabilities, they have been badly let down since the start of the virus. Hardly any daycare centre services are open, maybe some for two or three hours on one day a week. That's not good enough. Take Mary in Kerry as a 20-year-old son Connor, a big strong boy, needs routine and was doing very well in the service that he was going to, but it's closed. She works in the public sector, her husband works for himself, or he should be, but he has hardly worked since last match because his minding is intellectually impaired soon. They have three other children, they can't bring them anywhere, and they have to do themselves and go to matches and different things themselves. They need financial assistance to hire trained people to help them out, or else many parents can continue under this pressure, their mental health is suffering. It's the same with families who have, you know, a partner or a husband with dementia, or a mother or a father, all them services, the daycare centres that the buses used to bring them to places like Rock Mountain, Kilgarven for four or five days a week, they're all closed. And there were wonderful people running all these places, highly trained people in Ratmore, and Scotland, and Castle Island, and Noctagoshal. The closure of these centres has savage pressure put on husbands and wives and sons and daughters. They need to provide financial assistance for the families. We need to talk about home help. All people that wanted to stay in their homes as long as possible are not getting the home help they should get. And this is putting more pressure on our hospitals and our nursery homes, by not providing more home help for them to stay in their homes longer. That could happen if the services were provided for them. I'm asking you, Minister, and the Minister for Health, to do something about these issues that I'm raising. Thank you very much. I thank the Deputy for raising two issues in his leader's question. The first relation relates to the closure of beds. And I don't know the specific local circumstances in relation to Killarney, or indeed Columbanus' house that you mentioned. I can say that I did meet with the HEC myself for the South region on Friday. And they said they were actively looking for additional beds, in terms of community nursing beds, in terms of rehabilitation beds, with a view to making sure that there were proper placements and proper appropriate beds for patients who had left acute hospitals, for example, and who needed convalescence, or who needed nursing home beds. So it would appear to me that either this is a HECA, I'm not sure, you know, reconfiguration, where HECA would say you have to move from the wards to better single-room accommodations on suite. That's been going on for quite some time, and that has had an impact on certain centres. I don't know whether that applies here or not. What I do know is that funding has been provided, quite a substantial amount of funding has been provided now, to enable the HSE in all regions of the country to procure and to provide for additional rehabilitation beds and additional beds in nursing homes, with a view to making sure that there's a proper flow through our acute hospital system on an ongoing basis, from here right through to the middle of next year, and indeed beyond that. So if you want to give me the details of the specific cases, I'll pursue them and get replies for you, because it's more beds we need, not less, to deal with the impact of COVID-19. The second point is that COVID-19 has had an unfortunate negative impact on the provision of services for adults with disabilities, and particularly in terms of daycare services for people with disabilities. And nonetheless, there has been a programme since August of restoring aspects of those disability services for as many people as possible. About 19,000 people with a disability attend the adult day services, for example. And so the disability day service locations, which closed in March, day services have reopened now at about 40% capacity throughout August and early September. The funding will be increased, that's been provided already, so that the level of service available to people attending the adult day service can be increased as well. And additional money has been provided in the winter initiative to provide for additional services and additional volume of services. Likewise for school leavers and also intensive support packages to deliver to quite a number of individuals who are in a chronic situation. And there are quite a number of people in emergency situations, which I'm particularly worried about and concerned about, as are the services on the ground. And we intend to work with the service providers to see can we deal with those emergency situations more effectively than has been the case to date. In relation to the families with children with physical and mental disabilities, where he can provide the service, could he give them financial help so that they could hire somebody themselves? Because they can continue under the pressure they're in at the present time. In relation to the district hospital and the Columbanus home in Killarney, they're in the same campus. And like we read this T-shirt that he were going to provide more bins. It's the opposite that's happening in Killarney. And there is only the one hospital in Killarney, there is only the one community hospital there. So where are people that need to, that get sick, or need to rehabilitate for a short while after operations, in Karkar or Triliginal, where are they going to recuperate or be seen after? That's a savage court in Killarney. Yes, it's, we're told that it's HICWA. That HICWA have demanded this. But where is HICWA, where was the last 20 years, the same amount of people were going, and there's wards already closed in the district hospital in Killarney. So to close more now is absolutely scandalous and ridiculous, where there's people presenting maybe with different things and maybe the coronavirus as well. So I'm asking to look into it and deal with it and talk to HICWA, because it was good enough all the time since March. How is it all of a sudden getting, not picked from practice now? Thank you, Deputy. Thank you very much. I'm glad the Deputies clarified that aspect of it. I suspected it might have been a reconfiguration of the hospital because of HICWA's guidelines and saying what was there wasn't the best or wasn't optimal. But I will get a report on it, because I did meet with the HSE South team last week and this is an area of considerable concern to them, the need for additional beds outside of acute hospitals, you know, to provide placements for people. And I know they're engaging with providers, you know, they're engaging with many providers to get additional capacity. The money is there to get additional capacity. They need to procure it. On the disability question, of the 10 million extra, 7.5 million will go to the Disability Day Services. It'll be an extra day a week for over 14,000 adults. And in terms of the rest, 2.5 million will go to 210 intensive support packages to enable young adults with complex or high support needs to remain at home and in their communities. The packages are person-centered and tailored to the needs of the individual and their families. And that's an area that I think that's intense, resource intensive, but needed. Okay. Thank you. And will be to help people in their home. And we have to continue to build on that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.